Housewifery Wednesday: Laundry Edition

Laundry is something that I'm kind of obsessive about - but I can kind of justify it.

Let me begin by saying:

1. I do laundry MULTIPLE times a week, which may seem ridiculous since it's only me & Boyfriend.

2. I've been on prednisone since Thanksgiving-ish and I've gained a lot of weight and - TMI! - gotten sweatier. Sooo attractive.

Pleasant, right? So here is my justification for obsessive laundering: since I'm fatter than usual, there are limited outfits that I'm willing to wear 'cause I'm too cheap/vain to buy Prednisone Made Me Fat Clothes. And since I'm sweatier than usual, these choice pieces of clothing must be laundered more frequently.

MOVING ON.. I've been having some Laundry Issues lately - detergent stains (which of course only happen on favorite fancy clothes) - which is a Major Problem, since I have a restricted wardrobe. I switched from bright a$$ blue Tide to a clear detergent, but am STILL finding those annoying blue spots (while we're on the subject, do YOU know why detergent is blue?), so I have begun to explore non-detergent options of laundering.

I found a number of homemade detergent options, but most of them result in what has been referred to as a "gelatinous slime," and I'm not really into that. So when I found this recipe on DIY Natural, I was sold. It has the same basic ingredients as the others - shaved soap, borax, and washing soda - but where the other recipes ask you to boil everything together with some water, thus producing the slime/gel, the DIY Natural recipes only asks you politely to mix them into a neat powder. How easy can it get!?

I had to try it. If only for you, my dedicated and loyal audience of Kristen and Stacy. Also for my clothes' sake.

The recipe is very straightforward and not all that pretty to look at, so I didn't take pictures, but I have some advice:

1. If you use a box grater, like me, use the smallest side. I used the second smallest side and my ingredients did not mix as well.
2. BE CAREFUL while grating! I managed to grate myself only once but dang. It's not fun.
3. If you're using a hard soap (like Fels-Naptha), don't worry about grating the  e n t i r e  thing - I saved the last nubbin to use as a pre-treater.
4. If your soap is scented, be sure that you like the scent. My laundry now smells wonderfully clean thanks to the Fels-Naptha, but I can only imagine my misery if I'd gone with something like Irish Spring.

I've been using ~1 tablespoon per load of laundry and that seems to work out nicely. Because my soap shavings are bigger than they should be, I try to stir my detergent up before I measure it out, just to make sure that I get a good combination of soap, borax, and washing soda. It's a very simple recipe and MUCH cheaper than buying the liquid stuff at the grocery store!

What kind of detergent do you use? Any laundry tips or advice?

Homemade Starbucks

I am pretty much in love with Starbucks iced Passion tea lemonade and was horrified to discover that it's a seasonal drink in most stores.  Luckily, I found a way to feed my addiction through the winter, and it was super easy.  Here's how:

Step 1. Buy a tin of Tazo Passion tea.  I bought the regular box, but I've heard that there are "family size" ones that come with a big tea bag (instead of individual ones) intended to make an entire pitcher.  Must look into this.

Step 2. Buy lemonade.  I used Simply Lemonade because it's unsweetened and has yummy lemon pulp, but any kind of lemonade will do.  Or you could go crazy and make your own lemonade.

Step 3. Brew your tea.  Since it's going to be iced tea, brew it double strength.  I boiled 5 cups of water, moved it off the heat and put all of my tea bags in and used a clothes pin to hold all of the strings together.  I let the tea steep for about ten minutes, then strained the tea into a pitcher and put it in the refrigerator.  (My tin only had ten tea bags, but it looks like most normal Tazo packages come with 20.  If your box comes with 20 tea bags, be sure to use 10 cups of water.)

Step 4. Make it happen! I found several "recipes" for iced Passion tea lemonade on the Internet, most of which recommended a 1:3 ratio for the ice, tea, and lemonade, but I ended up using about half tea and half lemonade (ice really doesn't take up THAT much room). Shake and enjoy!

Step 5. OPTIONAL. If you prefer your tea sweetened, you have two choices: 1) buy Starbucks' Classic Syrup, or 2) make your own! Boil 1 cup of water and 1 cup of white sugar together until the sugar has completely dissolved. (You can also use simple syrup to keep cake moist - shh!) Starbucks uses about 3 tablespoons of syrup in 12oz., 4 tbsp in 16oz. and 6 tbsp in 24oz., but it's probably best to go by your own tastes.

Housewifery Wednesday: My Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies

My mother has a repuation.

No, not that kind.  When she was in high school, she won the Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow award and although she swears she only won because it was a multiple choice test (and that she took it as a joke), you would never know it if you met her now.  She makes perfect cookies, keeps her house spotless, raised four children, has her dream job (both of them, actually), and a 30+ year marriage.  It could make you sick.

But the point is that I have a lot to live up to.  My mom's chocolate chip cookies are kind of legendary (even though she swears she uses the recipe on the back of the chocolate chips... yeah, right) but last year, I finally found my own legendary chocolate chip recipe.  I made a batch right before I drove home for spring semester so that my family could ooh and ahh at my baking skillz.  But I ate them all during the 13 hour drive from Missouri to New York.  Oops! :mrgreen: Their secret ingredient - instant pudding - keeps them soft and delicious and wonderful (a.k.a. bad news for any diet that might have been happening). Of course, I still love Mommy's cookies best.. but who doesn't?  Without any further ado, here's my new favorite recipe:

The Most Delicious & Best Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes ~5 dozen cookies

Ingredients
4 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups butter, softened
1 1/2 cups brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup white sugar
2 (3.4 oz) packages instant vanilla pudding mix
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips / chunks / whatever your heart desires

Preparation

1. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour and baking soda. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar. Beat in the instant pudding mix until blended. Stir in the eggs and vanilla.
3. Slowly blend in the flour mixture. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips and nuts.
4. Cover dough completely with plastic wrap and let rest in refrigerator for at least 1 hour and up to 24 hours (or as long as you can wait!).
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
6. Drop cookies by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
7. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Edges should be golden brown.

Original recipe found at allrecipes.com

EDIT: Since posting, I've baked these cookies again and good GOD - 2 cups of butter is a lot!  I'm pretty sure the first time I made these cookies I used 2 STICKS.  Will report back.

Housewifery Wednesday: Baking Bread

Since early July, I've been on summer vacation.  By this I mean that I have been doing absolutely nothing and that it has been amazing.  But believe it or not, reading and playing the Sims all day gets to be a little monotonus so I took it upon myself to learn how to bake bread with the help of this book:

I debated whether to buy the book at all since the ~Master Recipe~ is available on the authors' website (along with lots of other information about their method) and Googling the title of the book will get you plenty of other bread-baking resources as well.  But I went for it.  In the end I'm glad I did because I tend to be a nervous baker / cook.

Before you even get started with the Hertzberg / François recipe, there's a significant investment.  I bought two large plastic food storage containers on Amazon (I bought those specific containers because they were the ones most frequently purchased with the book and the reviews were mostly positive) to store my bread dough and a baking stone to bake the bread on.  I'd read that you could just use a cookie sheet to bake on, but the baking stone absorbs moisture from the dough so the bottom of the bread doesn't get soggy.  I really like bread, especially bread that's nice and crunchy on the outside, so I found a decently priced baking stone from Crate & Barrel (PLEASE be careful buying a stone - C&B has another baking stone on sale with awful reviews; I'm not sure why they're even selling it!).
The authors also recommend an oven thermometer but I decided to wing it.  If you don't already have one, you'll also need a cooling rack - I've got a cheap one from Marshall's, but in the past I've pulled the metal rack out of my toaster and used that.  It's a little hoodrat, but it works!

The recipe is extremely simple (No kneading!  No worrying about how much the dough rises!) but that doesn't mean you can't mess it up.  My first batch of dough was a complete disaster.  Boyfriend does the whole "organic / whole wheat / one million grains" thing so I used a whole wheat flour which is what I blame my failure on.  My dough was incredibly dry and didn't rise.  The bread it produced was tough and bland.  Ugh!  I had other problems with this flour - I made cookies with it that turned out equally tasteless.  Who would've thought!?

For my second batch I told Boyfriend I needed unbleached all purpose WHITE flour.  He's a sucker for my winning smile :mrgreen: and he let me get some.  Because my bread was not only dry but also bland, I was worried that just changing out my flour wouldn't be enough.  Luckily, the switch from whole wheat to white did the trick and I am now turning out batches of beautiful dough and bread!  I've got this lovely dough sitting in my refrigerator right now:

This dough is about 24 hours old.

And made this beautiful loaf yesterday (don't worry - Boyfriend and I ate it ALL!!):

As you can see, my bread does NOT look like the perfect loaves on the cover of the book (or the ones that come up in the Google image searches) and I pretty much never expect them to.  The bread tastes wonderful and is so easy to make!  The book has tons of ideas for ways to tweak the recipe to make basically any kind of bread you want (ciabatta, herb bread, whole wheat sandwich bread, etc.) but I'm pretty content with the basic recipe.  If you have ANY questions about making bread, please feel free to ask ;)  It is so easy and you will love it!